Google's Fast Flip is for publishers

The love-hate relationship between publishers and Google is being renewed. So far, with a couple of exceptions, the reviews of Google's Fast Flip experiment – which lets you browse sequentially through news as if flicking through a magazine – have been quite measured. No wonder, after the heated debate that publishers initiated about the death of quality journalism on the internet. Now that Google is pushing this kind of journalism with projects like Spotlight and Fast Flip, what should they say? Google is even willing to share revenues from contextually relevant ads. Well, Google focusing on quality journalism isn't enough to save the world's broadsheets. But it is good for Google's image.

Why, then, does this project feel so exciting? Fast Flip offers a very visually orientated reading experience. One we know from print. One we love print for. To be able to understand information visually by the pictures or even just the size of a story is an important difference from standard web browsing. When you finish flipping through a whole newspaper, you have the good feeling, as if you have accomplished something. You feel informed. Did you ever have that feeling at the end of a session clicking through a news portal? Exactly.

Of course, the ability to process information visually has some downsides. Even though Fast Flip is operated by an algorithm, a news robot similar to the one that creates Google News, the publishers will like the fact that the ordering of information is driven more by publication than by subject. Which is not very internet. Secondly, Fast Flip is actually not about giving you a fast overview about all the news; it confronts you with less news. It is about reduction in a world where information overload is an everyday problem. And yes, this means Fast Flip is excluding stories. At this point the experiment researches only 39 news sources - and the only UK one is the BBC.

But that might change, and indeed one of the long-term aims is to export the technology to publisher. As Oliver Rickman, the UK spokesperson for Google, told the Guardian: "We look forward to adding more partners to Google Fast Flip in the future. In addition, our vision is that one day publishers will be able to embed the Google Fast Flip technology to show articles on their own websites, but we'll have to see how this stage of the experiment goes."

The capacity to browse easily through stories and process visual information fast is something that the publishers should have come up with themselves. They might like the new news experience on first sight. But once they have to license it from Google, the love-hate relationship will continue.

What do you think about Fast Flip? Do you like it, or does it make reading the news harder? Have your say in the comments.